Hippie News & Stuff: Bully

There is some really bad shit going on in that town in Rhode Island, where a young, free-thinker/student caused a revered iconic representation of a Catholic prayer to be removed from its prominent place in the school gym, where it had hung, violating the separation clause, for 49 years....

The brave student is named Jessica Ahlquist; she is the 16-year-old daughter of a firefighter and a nurse,; and she has since become the object of public obloquy from across the community of Cranston's pulpits and its paper. She has received threats, even on her life, from residents and outsiders alike. She standing up to it bravely, promising to walk across the stage for her 2013 graduation.

I hope, but doubt, that she makes it. Don't mistake me: I have no fear that, unless actual ill befalls her, she'll graduate SOMEWHERE. But I doubt it will be Cranston, RI. But, outside prison and the military, there is NO PLACE like school where they can fuck wicha if they wanna. And it sounds like the good people of Cranston wanna.

For some reason, there appear to be individuals in the world who do NOT regard the assaults, both real and threatened, from citizens (and/or fellow students) and the religious hierarchy of the local Catholic Church, upon a 16-year-old girl who happened to have blown rhe whistle on illegal, compulsory school prayer in a small Rhode Island city, as bullying. Some commentators on Facebook discussions of the matter pooh-poohed the severity of the charges being leveled at the people attacking the girl.

One fellow even suggested that, unles she was suffering the actual infliction of physical, it didn't qualify as bullying. Another suggested that you had to be wary of these things because there were a lot of "wussies" out there who'd complain about anything, if their "widdew feewings were huuuht.

I disagreed: both that you had to be injured to be that there are " a lot of wussie people around" today.

What I think is that there has started to be enough awareness of the issue that a LOT of people who wer tired of getting pushed around by asswholes decided to say "Stop it, asshole. I can't stop you, alone, we both know that. But a LOT of people don't LIKE an asswhole. SO quit it."

Something like that?

I was pushed around as a kid. A LOT! Beaten up, too. Mugged. Robbed. Threatened. Humiliated. Almost daily for about 2 years in one certain school in Cleveland. And there was NOTHING I could do, because that behavior was 'normal' for the time and the place.
1959? Sounds about right...
"If I'd had a rocket-launcher" I'd have blown the fucking place up.